by Mario Bolduc
“Since that day,” the busboy concluded, “we’ve called him the African. The man who came out of nowhere.”
Stopping by the refuge to see a friend, and hearing Wilson speak with Max, the busboy had his suspicions they might be talking about the same person. Which was why he’d come up to Max at the hotel bar. Maybe Max knew where the man who saved his father’s life lived. His family wanted to thank him in person.
Max remained discreet about the real reasons that prompted him to track Musindo, but he promised the busboy to put him in touch with the nurse as soon as he found him.
After the young man left, Max went back to the Ramada and knocked on Roselyn’s door. No answer. Fearing the worst, he ran to reception to get another magnetic key card and returned. He knocked again, then opened up.
Her stuff was scattered across the room, but no trace of Roselyn. Max ran to the window and spotted the Subaru in the parking lot, a short distance from the other vehicles. He ran into the corridor. A first blow to his head made him stumble; a second, harder this time, sent him into unconsciousness.
31
Max opened his eyes tentatively. It was daylight. He was tied up in the back seat of the Subaru. His head hurt horribly. Blood had run down his face and dried there. Where was Roselyn? The driver was rushing down a road in the middle of a forest. His accomplice turned to Max and pointed a gun at him. It was Bruno Shembazi, Inspector Kilonzo’s deputy.
Surprise was painted on Max’s face, and in bright colours. Shembazi burst out laughing. A warm, booming laugh, as if enjoying a particularly good joke. His eyes, his attitude, the way he held himself, all of it had changed. In Tanzania he had played the role of the long-suffering subaltern to perfection. Here, there was no doubt: he dominated the situation and was obviously finding pleasure in his new self.
“Through his incompetence and excessive ambition, Kilonzo damaged the reputation of all Tanzanian police officers. Following your arrest, he was already imagining himself chief of police, sitting in some air-conditioned office in Arusha, his hometown, with his car and driver and expense account. But now, because you got away, he’s making sure kids cross streets safely in Dar es Salaam. You owe me an eternal debt, do you know that? I saved your life.”
“What are you talking about?”
“Do you really think you could have gotten away from Kilonzo by yourself if I hadn’t helped?”
Max remained silent.
“Some of my men were in the van. The motorcycle belonged to the ministry. And do you really think Roosevelt Okambo was flying at that exact moment at that exact place just for fun? Come now.”
Max now understood why Okambo hadn’t believed him when he claimed he was acting alone. Max should have guessed that others were involved.
“Your life belongs to me now,” Shembazi continued. “I can do whatever I want to you.”
The exact words Kilonzo had spoken on his arrest. The two men had trained in the same school — with the Ugandan rebels.
“Why didn’t you leave me in Kilonzo’s hands then?”
“I had to stop the idiot from ruining my plans to find Samuel Musindo. All he wanted was for you to die so he could get a promotion.”
“Because you’ve got other ambitions.”
“I don’t have ambitions. Only a keen sense of duty.”
“Where’s Roselyn Kerensky?” Max asked. “What have you done with her?”
Shembazi didn’t answer.
“And what do you want with Musindo?”
“Only to lighten a father’s pain,” Shembazi answered after a short silence.
“You’re working directly for Lugembe?”
“His daughter’s killer is walking freely on the other side of the world, and you expect him not to intervene?”
“You killed Valéria? Sophie?”
“If only they’d collaborated, admitted their mistake, they would’ve survived. Lugembe isn’t a monster. He just wants to find the man who killed his daughter.”
“How did he come to know?”
“That Musindo was alive? The president’s always been suspicious of the lawyer. He made sure she was being watched by a few key people in her life. They told him all sorts of interesting details.”
“I thought they were allies, Lugembe and Valéria.”
“That doesn’t mean he should trust her blindly! History is full of lessons about how today’s allies are tomorrow’s enemies. Lugembe isn’t in power only because of his beautiful speeches. Shaking Obama’s hand, telling him what he wants to hear … it isn’t enough.”
Adding to his history lesson, Shembazi told Max, “In Africa, democracy is a fragile thing, at the mercy of some hysterical general or another. Sooner or later vicious clowns like Idi Amin will come out of the barracks and try to impose their law. Lugembe won’t make the mistakes of the past. He believes in democracy, but he isn’t naive.”
“So everyone’s being watched.”
“You could put it that way.”
Lugembe had been informed of Valéria’s panicked visit to the elder Musindo. He understood that the latter had put up his golf course for sale a minute after she left. He knew something was off. He’d sent Shembazi to pay a visit to the lawyer and her daughter. And he’d tried to get them to talk. Under torture, Valéria or Sophie had admitted that Samuel was still alive but hadn’t told him where he was hiding, or his new identity.
Learning that his daughter’s killer was on the lam, Lugembe, skeptical at first, carried out his own little investigation. It had convinced him that he’d been hoodwinked years before, and that sent him into an absolute rage. The rage of a head of state realizing that the laws he was supposed to defend were being broken. And the rage of a father who couldn’t tolerate that his daughter’s killer was still unpunished.
Lugembe sent Shembazi after Samuel Musindo, forcing Kilonzo to take the man into his confidence. Kilonzo never realized Shembazi’s real role. But Lugembe needed a personal snoop, someone he trusted absolutely and who could pursue the investigation to the ends of the earth.
Either the lawyer or her daughter had mentioned Albert Kerensky’s name under torture. Lugembe sent someone to Texas to interrogate him, but Kerensky had disappeared without leaving a trace. Meanwhile, Max had made an appearance on the scene, devastated by the death of Valéria and her daughter. When Shembazi realized the extent to which this old lover was taking his personal investigation seriously, he decided to use him. Until the day Kilonzo chose to blame him for Zuberi’s murder.
“Another one of your victims.”
“No. That was Kilonzo. He was looking for a way to get you. When he learned the witch doctor had agreed to meet with you, Kilonzo prepared a little welcome party. A setup. He was hoping to pin the murder on you, as well as the con you’d run on Harris. He was sure he’d be noticed by his superiors for that.”
Kilonzo had been ready to do anything for a promotion.
“Zuberi was in the dark. He’d been a small cog in the conspiracy, but a blind one. A screen to disguise Michieka’s deception.”
“Kilonzo must have thought he was the perfect patsy.”
“But he couldn’t prove his guilt,” Shembazi said. “And Zuberi had contacts in the government, allies, secret friends. In an interrogation, a legal one, Kilonzo could’ve never held his own against the witch doctor, who could have used his associations. On the other hand, you …”
“Easy prey.”
“At first I thought you knew more than we did. But I quickly understood you were as much in the dark as we were. I let you go on your way, to continue your search. And I kept an eye on you. I let you go free so you could do the work for me. To find that goddamn nurse. Ingenious, no?”
“I have no idea where Musindo is.”
“And that’s why you came all the way to Prince George? Because you have no idea?” Shembazi burst out laughing.
The Subaru turned on a gravel road just outside Vanderhoof and continued for several long minutes before stopping in a rudi
mentary, improvised parking lot. A muddy field in the middle of an abandoned nursery. The sort of place that was now used only by truckers to make a U-turn. On the ground, thick tire tracks in half-moons and zigzags. Shembazi looked around as he got out of the car, giving Max the impression he was discovering this place for the first time. His kidnappers had waited for Max to regain consciousness before leaving the road and finding this isolated place.
“You’re wasting your time, Shembazi. You got to me too early. If only you had waited —”
“Shut up.”
With a gesture of his hand — the one holding the revolver — Shembazi ordered Max to get out of the Subaru. He exited slowly, carefully, pain ripping through his skull.
Shembazi’s colleague, his face inscrutable, also got out. He pushed Max in front of him, away from the car. Had they decided to kill him here in the middle of nowhere? Max couldn’t believe they’d do it, even if they must have been sorely tempted.
He’d likely be tortured, as they’d done with Valéria, Sophie, and the others. But he had nothing to reveal, which foretold long hours of suffering.
“Samuel Musindo’s not hurting anyone anymore. It’s ancient history, all of it. Why keep going after him?”
“He killed the president’s daughter,” Shembazi replied. “He has to pay.”
“Just tell Lugembe you found him and killed him. He won’t know the difference.”
“You want me to betray the man who feeds and clothes me for a pathetic fraud artist? I should lie to the man I fought for in Uganda? The man I walked side by side with into Kampala to throw Idi Amin out? Is that what you’re saying?”
“I can pay you. I’ve got a lot of money.”
Shembazi leaned against the Subaru’s hood, a smile on his face. He was enjoying himself and wanted the pleasure to last, as if he’d been waiting for this moment for a long time.
“That’s the difference between you and me. You’re alone and I’m supported by an entire country, by a government. I’m not motivated by money like you. I don’t give a shit about your money.”
“I have no idea where Musindo is hiding. I don’t even know if he’s still alive.”
“Valéria Michieka wouldn’t have been so anxious when she learned her secret had been discovered if he was dead and buried.”
“Forget Musindo.”
“Shut up!”
Before Max could answer, Shembazi’s phone rang.
“Someone wants to speak with you,” he told Max.
He held out the phone. Max had a feeling, a bad one, that was confirmed when Shembazi’s toady pushed him toward his boss.
The phone was a Stellar.
Nervous, guessing what was on the other end of the line, Max took the smartphone.
On the screen, Roselyn Kerensky, tied to a chair. Behind her, crouching, a mountain of muscle: Ferguson, Jonathan Harris’s right-hand man.
“Max?” murmured Roselyn, her voice weak. “Are you there, Max?”
The old woman seemed terrified.
“Yes, yes, it’s me. Are you okay? Have they hurt you?”
Peas in a pod, the lot of them, forged from the same mould in the war against Uganda. Lugembe, Ferguson, Shembazi. The latter told him as much: Lugembe had hired them all for his protection and his secret service when he gained power.
“When Harris wanted to negotiate the terms for the implementation of his phone service on Tanzanian territory with the government,” Shembazi explained, “Ferguson’s presence on Harris’s yacht gave Lugembe’s negotiators an insight into the billionaire’s strategy.”
In Tanzania, thanks to the president’s shrewdness, consumers would have access to leading-edge technology at a modest price.
When Max arrived on Harris’s yacht, Ferguson had played along, though he knew who Max was. He’d seen him hanging around Valéria when he was on her surveillance team alongside other members of Tanzania’s secret service. They hadn’t known Max was a con man, and his cover had held. Until he went after Jonathan Harris. On the yacht, Ferguson had kept quiet for fear of compromising himself.
However, Max’s performance had come to Lugembe’s attention. At first the president found the situation rather funny. Harris was furious that the government wanted to tax his revenue at such a high rate. He demanded special favours. Seeing Max take a part of the man’s fortune pleased Lugembe, even if he hadn’t profited from it directly. Harris was humiliated, so much the better for that pretentious braggart who was always giving lessons in civility to everyone.
“You were right … on the Sunflower,” Ferguson said over the phone. “Technology is a wonderful thing.”
“Roselyn has nothing to do with this. Leave her be.”
“Tell us where Musindo is hiding,” Shembazi said flatly.
“Free Roselyn and I’ll tell you.”
“You’re not in a position to negotiate.”
“I have no idea where Musindo is. Roselyn doesn’t, either.”
“I’ll give you one last chance.”
“All I know is he landed in Vancouver. The rest of it is just conjecture. I’m travelling as blind as you are.”
“Bullshit.”
“Please, let Roselyn go.”
“He doesn’t know anything,” Roselyn said on the other end of the Stellar.
“Make a little effort, won’t you?” Shembazi coaxed.
Ferguson pointed his revolver at Roselyn’s temple.
“Free her.”
A long moment of silence, then a gunshot. On the Stellar’s screen, Max saw Roselyn trying to catch her breath, her eyes closed. Ferguson, stoic, hadn’t moved, the still-smoking revolver in his hand.
“Do you really want the murder of an old woman on your conscience?” Shembazi asked him. “And what about when her husband learns you’re responsible for her death? When he finds out that killing Musindo also caused his wife’s death … well, I wouldn’t want to be in your shoes.”
Before Max could react, another gunshot. Once again, Roselyn was unharmed, though how long would Ferguson keep missing?
“He lives in Prince Rupert,” Max spat out, desperate. “A young Indigenous man met him. Musindo saved his father’s life. All the kid knew was that he came from the coast.”
“You see? All you needed was a little help to remember.”
“Let her go now, please.”
“Where in Prince Rupert?”
“I’ll lead you there if you free Roselyn.”
Shembazi was silent, as if evaluating the offer. Max knew he needed an argument that would convince him, something that could save Roselyn’s life, and his own.
“He doesn’t know you’re after him.”
“You spoke with him?”
“Yes. He expects to see me. If he figures out I’m not coming, he’ll suspect something. You’ll never find him then. He’ll disappear without a trace.”
Max was improvising, but he was having some effect. Shembazi was listening, not talking.
“Free Roselyn now. She hasn’t done you wrong in any way, and she —”
A third gunshot. The Stellar’s screen spattered with red.
“Roselyn!” Max shouted.
Shembazi ripped the phone out of his hand and threw it on the ground where he stomped on it for good measure. “Let’s go.”
Disgusted, broken, Max let himself be dragged to the Subaru’s back seat. The door slammed behind him like one last gunshot.
32
Roselyn’s death broke something in Max. He felt as if he’d woken up in the middle of a boxing ring, had been used as a punching bag by the heavyweight champion of the world. Pain in the pit of his stomach. It didn’t fade. He felt responsible for what had happened. Roselyn had wanted only one thing: to find her husband. He’d brought her to this isolated part of the world without a care for her fate. Sure, he’d paid lip service to safety, asking whether she wouldn’t be better off staying in Chicago or returning to Houston, but he hadn’t spoken very loudly, or very long. He knew she’d be usefu
l to him if they met Albert. Knew that if there was someone to talk some sense into him — if that was possible — it would be his wife. When she insisted and decided to come with Max, he’d felt relieved. Now he regretted that.
That was his life — a race to fix the latest failure, the latest mistake. An illusory life of constant repentance. Ironically, living on the wrong side of the law had sharpened his moral core. Roselyn’s death was a wound as deep as Valéria’s or Sophie’s, though he’d known the old woman a few days at most. His guilt was untenable.
With Roselyn’s death, Max’s situation had only worsened. He’d created this story about Musindo — completely made up, of course, but a story that comforted Shembazi in his conviction that Max knew where to find the nurse. His pathetic attempt to save Roselyn had failed. And now, as Shembazi had predicted, if Max ever got away from these two goons, he’d have Kerensky on his tail, seeking vengeance for his wife’s death.
But as soon as Shembazi and his muscle figured out he’d lied, he would have his brains splattered live and in colour on a Stellar screen.
All Max could do now was play it by ear and hope for the best. He was out of options.
First, to find Samuel Musindo.
Studying the forest zipping by through the car window, dark coniferous trees growing in tight rows, Max once again wondered why the fugitive had chosen this part of the world when he could have found anonymity in the crowds of Toronto or Montreal. If he could figure out what had motivated his choice, Max would have a chance at discovering where the nurse might be. But no matter how he turned the puzzle over in his head, nothing came to him. Musindo’s motivations remained hazy.
Max knew little about the man, something he regretted now. How had Valéria come to abandon this child, and why had Thomas Musindo ended up with his guardianship? Was he Samuel’s true father, or had he only acted as such to help out Valéria? Abortion was illegal in Tanzania, except in cases where the mother’s life was in danger. Which clearly hadn’t been the case.
A child who, when he grew up, became a trafficker and killer of albinos. Valéria had done everything she could to protect him, though she’d very publicly advocated for capital punishment. There was something off about the whole situation. Both in terms of the trafficking Samuel participated in and the means Valéria had employed to save his life.
